Chapter 28

It was a busy time. First off, they had to travel into town for winter provisions. John hooked up the trailer and they literally loaded it to the brim. The girls made a raid on several fabric stores that left their inventories short and the managers smiling as they counted the money.

John focused on more practical matters like food, video tape, a complete editing set up and as the girls would be designing clothes like mad, practicing with the casting machine, a whole lot more of the chemicals needed. The chemical house was followed by trips around to several hardware houses and surplus outlets.

Lastly, as the girls went on a “mall crawl” John bought out a video game stores stock of the latest games. He hid them away for Theresa.

Over the next few months John completed drawings of his machines and write-ups of their principles.

His yearly endowment arrived along with a notice from his lawyers: “You’re doing better, but spend even more!”

He cabled them back asking for and receiving a recommendation for the best patent firm. He double checked with several other sources and confirmed the recommendation. He contacted them and began the long patent process. Next he contacted his lawyers to begin the corporate process.

When asked why they should get it all set up, but not instigate it until a certain date he informed them: “Just leave the names blank, otherwise ... you don’t want to know.”

Even lawyers are smart enough to know what that means so not another word was spoken about it.

John made a last trip into town to deliver his write-ups to his patent lawyers by registered mail. Taking the second cruiser he had it winterized and serviced. He made a side trip to a jewelry store while he waited.

The girls helped prepare the place for winter. The second cruiser was returned to the storage shed and dipstick heater installed. A trickle charger now supplemented the battery and a spare sat on its own charger.

John had bought anti-freeze while in town and he showed the girls how to winterize their future vehicles on ‘Cruiser one. To his mild surprise they were fascinated. He then serviced the snowmobiles. Again, they were attentive over his actions as he lubed up the track idlers and changed the plugs. Test running them and starting them several times to be certain they would be usable come snow. He checked all belts and added anti- freeze lube to all cables.

The girls were going great guns on their fashion ideas. John worked out bonding processes for zippers and fasteners. Cindy insisted he do something about the hip cables. He compensated for them by increasing the tension head to foot and balancing tension side to side. Making a junction a little higher on the neck between the arm cables and the back. Now cables ran up each leg and then joined at the neck with the arm and head cables. A separate cable ran straight down the back and connected to a cable connected between the two leg cables. The result when cinched up tight flexed hardly at all when the weight of the foam was added. However, the frame did. John beefed it up with some angle iron and then the system worked well. This eliminated both the hip and shoulder cables. John thought the shoulders sagged a little, but he added a Delron cross bar woven between the three down cables and this cured it.

Rather than having to make every little change himself, John taught the girls how the system worked. He had computer aided programming tools that helped immensely. Once he got the idea of three dimensions across to them, it all seemed to fall into place.

The computer drove the arms, which knew where they were by sensors on themselves and the tables. The scanning table used contact sensors to read relative positions of body parts. A series of floating wheels scanned down the body gave a rough reference which more accurate probes refined. A photo scan read skin tone and helped locate such things as nipples. The computer mapped all readings together to build a composite three dimensional picture of the body which was stored in arrays.

On the casting side, the computer first determined the exact location of the suspended cables. Then performed a centering routine to map the body arrays around the support structure. It then made passes adding material to the cables, one layer at a time. Making a proportional number of passes depending on thickness at any given point. The central structure was made up of courser material. The machine switching to continually finer grained material as the surface was approached. Finally it laid on a smooth skin like plastic, adding pigmentation according to the RGB (Red, Green and Blue) values from the photo arrays. The result was a lifelike replica. Lifelike because it matched proportions exactly within thousandths of an inch and the exact color values of the original master (body).